News
Newsletter for the week ending 4th February
Supporting jack with his 100km run, visiting a working fishing boat and selling shack, fractions to decimals/decimals to fractions, science in our woodland and the circulatory system are just some of the things happening this week in and around the classes, so please read on to see what has been happening in each class.
Friends of Appledore Library (FOAL) have contacted us because they are looking for new members interested in becoming a trustee for the charity. For a conversation to find out more of what that might entail please call 01237 422518.
We wish you all a super weekend
From Jeremy Cooper and all the children and staff
AROUND THE CLASSES
In Turtles and Dolphins this week we have been learning about fishing in Appledore. We watched a video about how the fishermen catch their fish, we learnt that the name of the fishing boat is a trawler boat and we labelled parts of the boat. We have found out the names of the sea creatures that fishermen in Appledore catch. Today we walked down to the Quay and the people from Serene Skye talked to us about their fishing boat and fish shack. We brought some fish to make fish cakes back in school.
In Year 1 this week we have started a new book for our Literacy sequence which is a non-fiction book all about the weather. So this week we went on a weather walk around the school and thought about words we could use to describe the weather. Then we worked in teams to make posters about different types of weather. We thought of words to describe the weather, the things we liked and disliked about it and what we might wear. In Maths we have been doing addition using a number line and completed challenges where we roll a dice and add the number we landed on to our number card. In our topic work we finally had some results from our Science experiment! We found that the bread that we had touched with unwashed hands had the most mould and so we made posters to teach people how to wash their hands properly. It’s been a great week in Year 1!
Highlight of this week for Lundy Puffins was their 1km run in the park to support Jack with his target of running 100km in 100 days for charity. They had a great time and some enjoyed it so much they managed to do an extra lap! In Maths this week they have finished their learning about division and have started a new unit of work on tally charts and pictograms. It would be great if they could continue to practise their rapid recall of multiplication and division facts for the 2, 5 and 10x tables, so I will add a link to a useful website on Google Classroom to support this. In English they practised their skills of writing non-fiction and remembered how to use commas in a list. In their topic work they continued to learn about Grace Darling and thought about why she did what she did. As part of their value work into ‘Healthy Mind’ they have looked at the book ‘Huge bag of worries’ and have learned about feelings and how to identify them.
Year 3 had great fun selecting the instruments they wanted to use to perform their graphic score. They refined their choices and gave careful thought to the dynamics of their piece by thinking about the tempo and volume. They also considered the timbre of the sound the instruments produced and whether it was appropriate for the noise they were trying to reproduce. Year 4 used the djembe drums to make up their own cyclic patterns. Year 5 considered the qualities of a divine being and learnt how to say certain foods in French. Year 6 combined their RE and music work by writing a very personal and aesthetic response to stargazing and the majesty of the universe whilst listening to The Planet Suite. Fair play to the child who said, “I am surprised you didn’t ask us to write it in French!”
This week Year 3 have continued to multiply by 3, 4 and 8, and have used their knowledge of their times tables to solve more challenging problems. In English, the children have written up the information they learnt about the great woman in the world who they have been researching. We have then carried out an elicitation task to start our new writing unit. The class carried out their Science learning in the woodland area this week. They learnt about animal’s skeletons, looking at those which have skeletons, those which have exoskeletons and those which have no skeleton.
HMS Echo have been amazing authors this week. They have planned and written their own stories based on Winter’s Child’ by Grahame Baker-Smith. Each story features a season’s child such as Spring’s Child and explains how the season needs to change to solve a problem such as not being able to grow food. They have used some amazing skills; ambitious vocabulary, complex sentences and speech punctuation to name a few, Next week they will publish books that will be available to read on the writer’s wall. Here are two excerpts from Oscar and Anya’s stories. In the morning, Beth was out for a walk. Suddenly a rustle came from the emerald tree that stood next to Beth. She pondered what it could be but before she was going to clamber up the mossy tree, it fell out and It was the longest summer Grandpa could remember with sizzling sun and red hot stones. But Oscar loved the summer when he could play football and climb trees. Mum was worried because the heat was becoming too intense for grandpa and he couldn’t go outside.
It’s been lovely to see an almost complete Year 5 back in school this week. Our work on decimals has been fun and rewarding with the class enjoying the challenge of converting fractions into decimals. We have been looking at the features of an explanation text by reading texts about different inventions (the parent/teacher pleaser machines, a tidy bedroom machine and some mechanical trousers (from Wallace and Gromit). We are having a real focus on improving our handwriting, moving to a cursive style, and producing neater work in our exercise books. In science half the class have been making parachutes and investigating the air resistance in different sizes whilst the other half of the class have been in the art studio printing. Our topic work has been to read extracts from Samuel Pepys diary and see what this tells us about the great plague; we have used the hypothesis evaluator skill to complete this work. The week has ended with half the class undertaking playground leader training in the hall with the other half outside doing some gardening. A really productive week Y5
Year 6 have been busy with fractions, decimals and percentages in Maths. In Literacy, they are writing a letter to an unborn sibling, as the character Cameron. Science is moving into work on Animals Including Humans and the circulatory system. In Computing, they have enjoyed creating their own webpages and have had some great ideas. They are still plugging away at spellings and grammar as well as improving fitness in PE – they have had amazing determination and team work in our interval training. Thank you to those who have paid for Bristol.
